The Uninvited Guest
My name is Lee Doha. Twenty-four years old. Currently a complete unemployed bum, though I’m helping out with my uncle’s business at his request. That was my current résumé.
Ever since I visited the psychiatric clinic yesterday, my head’s been strangely foggy.
Maybe I shouldn’t have gone at all.
It feels like I just exposed all my ugly secrets for nothing. How the hell am I supposed to go back next week? Goddammit. Ever since my mind went haywire, my personality seems to have followed. I wasn’t always this pathetic, spineless loser.
One thing’s for sure, though—I got myself a daughter.
I clutched my head as I poured boiling water from the coffee pot into a cup of ramen. This was the life of a twenty-four-year-old freeloader who only eats breakfast at eleven in the morning. I balanced the chopsticks on the lid and was about to turn on the TV when… I felt a vibration rattling the table.
It was a call from an unsaved number.
“The hell?”
The moment I answered, a sharp, irritated woman’s voice burst through.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you want?”
“Why are you calling?”
“I’m coming over to the house. Got some work stuff. I’ll be staying there from now on. The boss said he’s giving me that branch location.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I already told Mom, so clean up your room. I’m gonna use it.”
“What kind of bullshit are you spewing first thing in the goddamn morning?”
“Just clear out that storage room you’ve been using. Or I can sleep on the sofa in the living room…”
I hung up without thinking.
Goosebumps prickled across the back of my hand and I nearly threw the phone, but I barely stopped myself.
What the hell was this bombshell?
The owner of that unsaved contact was none other than my older sister. Twenty-six years old. A woman still living like an idiot, working part-time as a server at a bar even though she was well past the age when she should’ve gotten her shit together. Her name was Lee Seol.
And she’s coming here? To this house?
No fucking way.
I remembered how much of a nightmare she was before she moved out. Getting drunk and throwing tantrums the second she walked through the door was routine. If she puked, I was the one who cleaned it up. Stripping off her nasty-smelling clothes and passing out half-naked… that was…
Bzzzz—
The phone vibrated again.
“What.”
“Why the hell did you hang up on me? Are you crazy?”
“You’re actually coming? To our house?”
“Did you think I’d call just to lie to you for fun? And you little shit, why are you saying ‘our house’ like I’m not family?”
“Fine. Where are you?”
“Me? Almost there.”
“Wow. You really are a reckless bitch.”
“Fuck you. Watch your mouth.”
I stared down at the cup ramen that was boiling so hard the lid was about to pop off.
If my sister was coming, she was definitely going to camp out in my room. No, it wasn’t even a possibility anymore—it was basically guaranteed. If there had ever been any source of my masturbation addiction in my life, it was her.
This woman’s stubbornness went beyond imagination.
“…Just tell me exactly where you are.”
“I’m in front of the house, you moron.”
“Right now? You mean in front of the apartment?”
“No, at the intersection. Why? You got a friend over?”
This ignorant woman didn’t even know her only brother had basically cut off all human contact. Or maybe she just didn’t give a shit about her family. I got up from the sofa and headed to my room.
The intersection was less than five minutes away.
Given the current state of my mind, I’d been jerking off like a machine lately. Even if I emptied the trash bin full of tissues and wet wipes once every two weeks, it filled right back up.
My room right now?
It was a fucking crime scene.
“Hey, can you stop by the convenience store and grab something for me?”
“What? Why are you suddenly talking about a convenience store?”
“My head hurts like hell. Get me some Gel-Tos. Just buy some Gel-Tos.”
“Gel-Tos my ass. That’s for stomachaches. Did you hit your head while I was gone? Did you actually turn into a retard?”
“Just buy it. Cold medicine, anything.”
When I opened the door, the distinct smell of a man’s room hit me hard. I never noticed it before, but now that I was hyper-aware, the fishy stench was overwhelming.
The trash bin.
I had to empty the trash bin. Right now. It was stuffed full from the fresh supply of “daughter material” I’d gathered a few days ago. Packed tight.
“Cold medicine’s fine, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ll get it?”
“Fine. Are you actually sick or something?”
“No, just… feeling a bit rough.”
I held the phone to my shoulder with my cheek and tied up the plastic bag in the trash bin.
“You’ll really buy it for me, sis?”
“Ugh, fuck. If my little brother says he’s sick, I have to buy it.”
“Thanks, sis. I’m really not feeling good.”
But something felt off. This bitch isn’t usually this nice…
My instinctive sense of unease was never wrong.
The moment I grabbed the tied bag and sprinted toward the front door, a mechanical beeping sound shattered the silence. Beep beep beep beep. …Ah.
“But what should I do? I’m already at the house.”
“…What should you do? You’re already at the house.”
“Your sister is feeling really fucking suspicious right now?”
“…So I really need to wash up. You can go buy the cold medicine and eat it yourself.”
The voice splitting into two wasn’t some hallucination from mental illness or magic. The front door clicked open, and someone stepped inside. A yellow-dyed ponytail with roots turning black at the scalp. Shockingly fair skin that didn’t match the hair at all.
One-seventy-three? Four? Our mother’s daughter who inherited her uselessly tall genes.
That woman. The twenty-six-year-old woman. Lee Seol. Also known as the crazy bitch.
“Ah.”
Maybe I’d been staring too intently. My foot caught on the corner of the desk I’d left spread out in front of the TV.
My center of gravity tilted. Oh. Oh no. A mere human couldn’t defy the absolute law of gravity. Unfortunately, that applied to me too.
THUD!
My knees stung. But my heart hurt more. Because the bag in front of me had flipped over. Pink and white tissues blooming like cherry blossoms. Wet wipes.
“……?”
My sister and I couldn’t even exchange a normal greeting after months apart. She dropped the handle of her carrier, pulled out her wireless earbuds, and walked toward me with an annoyed expression. Then, instead of offering me a hand, she picked up one of the scattered tissue pieces.
“What the hell is all this tissue… Ah.”
She sniffed. Her white nose wrinkled.
“Ah, fuck…”
Her nose twisted into a fierce scowl.
“Ah…”
A single syllable of disbelief.
“…Fuck. What the fuck.”
Her voice continued.
“Ah fuck, you disgusting perverted bastard.”
With genuine revulsion on her face, my sister looked down at me from where she was crouched. She couldn’t even drop the piece of tissue in her hand. After smelling the scent of my shame. I suddenly found myself being condemned by this insane woman. Fuck.
—
“You’re a real piece of shit. Wow. This is so fucking gross.”
About ten minutes had passed since the incident. I’d had to clean up the tissues that had bloomed across the floor, plus the spilled ramen on the desk… A lot had happened. I was exhausted.
“Are you actually in heat or something? You don’t do any work and just jerk off at home all day? Wow…”
What was hardest was enduring the contempt from that crazy woman in silence. She hadn’t even put her carrier away yet. She just followed me around, yapping nonstop.
I finally couldn’t take it anymore.
“You’re the one in heat. Who was the one who started wearing makeup on her face since she was a kid?”
“What?”
“No? That’s not it? And I’m proud of it?”
“Proud of what? Proud of what, you perverted fuck?”
“A man’s supposed to… Never mind, fuck it. Why am I even talking to a bitch like you. Ugh.”
At my words, my sister held her breath for a second, then started snickering. Crazy bitch. Laughing like that first thing in the morning—she was clearly a full-blown lunatic. I wanted to ignore her but couldn’t. Even while wiping up the ramen broth with tissues, I glared at her.
“Just stop already.”
“Goo-men-hwe-ra or whatever.”
“I seriously want to beat the shit out of you, you fucking bitch.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve talking to your big sister like that. Want to die? And now that I think about it, you asked me to buy cold medicine because of this, didn’t you?”
“……”
“Wow… Look at you shutting your mouth. Your dick is seriously filthy. Get lost, you moron.”
We were in the middle of the living room. Where the hell was I supposed to get lost to? She kicked me lightly with her toe while I was crouched down cleaning the broth. She was wearing white socks. Fuck. She must have seen me moving my mouth because she clicked her tongue with a “tsk tsk” and turned around.
“I need to shower, so seriously get lost.”
“Get lost where? This is the living room.”
“Move that carrier over there. It was so heavy coming up the hill I thought I was gonna die.”
“Eat shit.”
“Then I’m just gonna shower right now?”
“Are you a child? Do whatever you want.”
My sister started taking her clothes off. She threw her flight jacket onto the sofa, then yanked off the t-shirt underneath in one motion. She really was something else. Even though she’d been living on her own for months, her behavior hadn’t changed at all. Soon she’d stripped down to her underwear, humming as she looked for the bathroom.
“Don’t look, you dirty bastard. Don’t even come near the bathroom.”
“I’m not interested in the slightest.”
Still, walking around half-naked like that. She must think of me as some emotionless object. Or maybe she just sees me as that much of a pushover idiot.
I secretly lifted my eyes.
Her back as she walked toward the bathroom. The yellow bleached hair stuck to her neck like stray branches. A straight, white spine. And below that. Curves. The body line that stood out so sharply against the black underwear. It was pure white.
Hmm.
…Her walk is really annoying, though. Does she think the house is a model runway or something?
“……” Fuck.
What the hell is this?
For a moment my ears felt muffled and I swallowed hard. The sensation sliding down my throat made me think. Why the hell was I just staring at the back of that bitch’s head? I blinked. Looked down at the floor, then turned my head again. I could see her entering the bathroom through the open door.
This time it was her side profile.
The curves were even more pronounced. Black bra. Breasts. Below that, black panties. The thin straps. …Her ass.
The door closed with a click. She was fully inside the bathroom. I was still staring into empty space. At the spot where my sister had disappeared.
“……”
Ah. I must have been staring because I wanted to punch her. Yeah, why else would I be looking at my own mother’s daughter? She’s such a filthy woman. I must have shuddered at how filthy she is and looked without realizing it.
I snapped out of it and started cleaning the ramen broth again.
For some reason, my eyes kept catching on the socks my sister had taken off and left on the floor. White socks. She must have worn them for a long time because the soles were especially dirty.
“……”